“Wild in their domesticity, mythical in their realism, ethereal in their lyrical beauty,

Hunt's poems fearlessly explore the boundaries between love and loss, longing and regret.” – Kim Barnes

“This book invites readers to praise, lament,

and crave the observable world.”– Dorianne Laux

 “Kathryn Hunt’s much anticipated first book is a delight…

a strong and mature voice beautifully blending narrative and music.” – Peter Pereira

“Love and fear, joy and grief, life and death are the harnessed horses

which pull a reader through the pages.” – Gary Copeland Lilley

Long Way Through Ruin charts a woman’s pilgrimage through a landscape of desire and memory. Hunt’s poems move across land brightened by time-whitened bones and a plenitude of stars. They are home to cast-asunder families and the last redoubt of cougar, wolves, birds.  All disappearing into “the seam of the earth.” These poems are open spaces where the dead speak and the living find consolation against calamity in love, in drink, in the natural world, in remembrance itself.  

About the Author 

Kathryn Hunt lives in Port Townsend, Washington, on the coast of the Salish Sea. Her poems and essays have appeared in Rattle, The Sun, Willow Springs, Orion, Crab Orchard Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review, among other publications. She is also a director of documentary films. Take This Heart, a feature-length film about children in foster care, was broadcast on PBS and honored with the Anna Quindlen Award for Excellence in Journalism. No Place Like Home was screened at the Venice Film Festival, among others. Kathryn works as a freelance writer.

Veteran public school teacher Lavinia Sparks is threatened with dismissal because she won’t stop teaching Shakespeare to her fifth grade students at Muhammad Ali Elementary School. Miz Sparks remembers a time when students were known for their talents, not for their test scores.

I can’t take one more minute, thought Miz Sparks. I’ll retire if this administration doesn’t begin to provide assistance, instead of soundbites and condemnation. School’s gone to hell, and they’re on vacation.

About the author:

Nancy Rawles is a writer and teacher. Her novel Love Like Gumbo won an American Book Award. Her novel My Jim, the story of the bereaved family of Mark Twain's famous slave character, was chosen by the Seattle Public Library for its popular Seattle Reads program.

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